22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
minated, and it will no longer be necessary to think of them as possible 
dangers to human life. Thus, in England, by the universal practise of 
muzzling the dogs for a sufficiently long period, hydrophobia has been 
eliminated; in the tropics by the quite feasible if somewhat difficult 
plan of destroying the mosquitoes, yellow fever and malaria may be 
utterly stamped out in some regions. Other diseases are much less 
easily controlled, but it does not appear more difficult to destroy them 
than it once did to get rid of the wolves in England. 
Along with the development of the medical and agricultural sci- 
ences, we may hope for great advances in social organization, reducing 
to a minimum the tremendous waste of life and property which goes 
on to-day. It is not too much to expect that every individual will be 
assured all the air, food, clothes and shelter necessary for a normal 
existence, and will find ample opportunities for exercising such talents 
as he may possess. Liberty will be curtailed in so far as it permits 
antisocial activities, but it will be tremendously extended, in the form 
of practical opportunities to develop ordinary or special abilities. All 
this may be a long way ahead, and there may exist great differences as 
to the program for the near future; but I suppose that few will deny 
that some such outcome as that indicated should logically follow from 
indefinite advance in the direction we are even now taking. 
If we picture human society thus relatively perfected, and free from 
many of the ills which now so fearfully decimate it, what have we left 
to desire? Very much, I venture to think. Is there one of us who 
could honestly say that, if he had been born into such a society, he 
would be without any serious defects of mind or body? In other words, 
given as good an environment as could well be devised, should we then 
be perfect? It is exceedingly obvious that we should not. 
Those who are enthusiastic, and very justly, concerning the possi- 
bilities of social reform, are somewhat too apt to assume that all defi- 
ciencies noted in people to-day are due to adverse external conditions. 
The student of heredity—even the farmer, when he is dealing with his 
crops—knows better than that. Figs do not grow on thistles, for all 
the fertilizers in the country. There is no doubt whatever that every: 
year there are born thousands of persons who are not merely unfitted 
to succeed in the world as it now is, but would never be successful in 
any complete sense in any world which could be devised or imagined. 
Some of those who recognize this fact see in it the doom of all social 
amelioration. If to-day the tremendous destruction of the unfit which 
takes place leaves us so many incapables, what would happen if most of 
those who perish were to survive? Would not society be buried beneath 
a load of incompetency, which would make even such organization as 
we have impossible? To this gloomy suggestion it may be replied, in 
the first place, that much of the present-day elimination is of those who 
